The Mystery and Glory of God’s Name

ABSTRACT: God introduced himself to Moses by a divine name, YHWH. This name appears in various translations as Jehovah, Yahweh, and the LORD, but it always suggests the doctrine of divine aseity. Jewish tradition avoided pronouncing the divine name, leading to the New Testament adopting a similar custom, referring to God and Jesus as “Lord.” Christians today need neither hesitate to pronounce the divine name nor reject the use of substitutes. Instead, translators and preachers would be wise to remain aware of the differences between God’s name and his titles as they help others to know him personally.

Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, to whom belong wisdom and might. (Daniel 2:20)

One of the first things Christians should know about the God of the Bible is that he has a personal name. The English word God is not a personal name; it is a common noun (like chair, mountain, or king). When it comes to human beings, we naturally differentiate them by name: John, Mary, Hannah. (We do not say, “Human #1, human #2, human #3.”) As Christians, we conventionally differentiate the true God of Israel from other gods in writing by means of capitalization (“God” vs. “gods”). But since our God is a personal being, we should also recognize that he bears a unique personal name. We should therefore be like the enslaved Israelites in Egypt, whom Moses anticipates will ask concerning their soon-to-be Savior, “What is his name?” (Exodus 3:13).

In the present essay, I examine the name of God as he reveals it to his people throughout redemptive history. After considering some of the different titles used for God and the gods, I discuss the name by which God reveals himself, the various ways the people of God have handled his name, and why considering God’s name remains important today, especially for the work of translating God’s word.

What’s in a Title?

Before considering the name of God, we need to distinguish further between personal names and titles (or epithets). For example, although the word Baal is popularly regarded as a name, it is strictly speaking a title (to be more specific, an epithet) of a particular Canaanite deity. In the Canaanite languages (including Hebrew), the word ba^ʕal simply means “lord” or “master.”¹ The deity we refer to as Baal was in fact the storm god Hadad (or Haddu). The Canaanites commonly assigned to Hadad the epithet ba^ʕal (lord). In fact, in certain contexts, the word ba^ʕal could also mean “husband.” This semantic range allows Hosea the prophet to incorporate the word ba^ʕal in an ingenious wordplay: “In that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband,’ [^ʔîš-î = ‘my man’], and no longer will you call me ‘My Baal’ [ba^ʕl-î = ‘my lord’]” (Hosea 2:16). The prophet is castigating the religious syncretism of the northern tribes, which had shamefully blended in the worship of the true God with the false worship of the Canaanite deity Hadad.

Here we should note that the triune God of Scripture has many titles and epithets. Most famously, the incarnate Son of God is referred to as Christ hundreds of times in the New Testament. This is not a surname, as some surmise, but rather a highly significant title: Christós is a Greek word that means “anointed one,” and it is a direct translation of the Hebrew equivalent māšîaḥ (also meaning “anointed one”). He is called the Christ because he comes in fulfillment of the three major offices in the Old Testament whose occupants were specially anointed with oil (a form of consecration): prophets, priests, and kings.

Titles and epithets are usually brief, meaning-rich descriptors of persons. Biblical titles of God vary widely. For example, a title can be lengthy and specific: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Amazingly, this title of God is self-referential while including human beings (i.e., the God of the universe describes himself in relation with sinful creatures). A biblical title can also be cryptic and mysterious. For example, scholars still puzzle over what the Hebrew title ^ʔĒl Šadday (El Shaddai) means. It is usually rendered in English as “God Almighty,” but the real meaning of this ancient title remains unclear. Certain titles can also be largely restricted to one biblical author. For example, Isaiah’s favorite title for God, one that few others use, is “the Holy One of Israel.”²

These titles bear great theological significance for understanding who God is, especially as he relates to his people in covenant faithfulness. But they don’t in themselves represent his name.

God’s Mysterious Name

What, then, is the actual name of Israel’s God? In biblical Hebrew it is represented by a sequence of four consonants, the famous tetragrammaton: YHWH.³ This name occurs a total of 6,828 times in the Old Testament. Such a word is obviously unpronounceable in transliteration, since it has no vowels. These missing vowels must be understood in light of the ancient oral tradition of reading the Hebrew Bible.

Full vocalization of the biblical text was established relatively late by a group of Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes. These scribes ingeniously combined two ancient traditions (one written, the other oral) into a single composite text. For centuries prior to the Masoretes, Jewish scribes had meticulously copied and preserved the consonantal text of the Old Testament to an exacting standard. Alongside the written tradition, however, they maintained an equally rigorous and rich oral tradition of chanting the text (with all of its nuances and details). Unfortunately, their work took place more than a thousand years after the close of the Old Testament canon — in the final centuries of the first millennium AD.

By that time, the oral tradition had long eliminated the practice of pronouncing the divine name.⁴ This tradition dictated that in every one of the 6,828 occurrences of YHWH, a different word must be pronounced. Usually, the tradition stipulated the substitution of the Hebrew title ^ʔădōnāy, “(my) Lord,” occurring in a specialized spelling that is reserved for the tetragrammaton (more on which below). The Masoretic scribes faithfully carried on this practice. In other words, whenever encountering YHWH in a text, the Jewish reader would read a completely different word. This interweaving of consonants and vowel points may be represented in the following simplified way:⁵

YHWH → Y-ĕ-H-ō-W-ā-H ← ^ʔă-d-ō-n-ā-y = Lord

In the Middle Ages, Christian Europeans apparently misunderstood the intent behind this compound representation and incorrectly inferred that God’s name was “Jehovah.”⁶ In many translations (including most English Bibles), however, this basic concept from the Jewish tradition is maintained. English translations, for example, generally represent the tetragrammaton as the word “LORD” in small capitals.⁷ The distinction between “Lord” and “LORD” is an important one to observe and explain to believers, since it enables the reader to distinguish between a title (Lord) and a personal name (LORD = YHWH). Furthermore, while it is appropriate to speak of YHWH as “Lord,” the converse is not true: Other “lords” (whether human or divine) are never equal to YHWH.

But whether one uses YHWH, Jehovah, or LORD, the fact remains that this ancient Jewish practice led to widespread ignorance about the exact pronunciation of God’s name.

“One of the first things Christians should know about the God of the Bible is that he has a personal name.”

Nevertheless, a few pieces of evidence allow us to approximate the basic form of the sacred tetragrammaton. To begin with, the abbreviated form Yāh (representing one half of the full form YHWH) is attested 49 times in the Old Testament (primarily in the Psalms). It appears that the Jewish oral tradition did not alter the original pronunciation of this word. This appears to indicate that the first vowel in the tetragrammaton had a certain /a/ quality. Famously, this abbreviated word also occurs in the universally recognized exclamation “hallelujah” (a transliteration of the Hebrew halĕlû-yāh, “Praise YHWH!”). Furthermore, the names of numerous individuals in ancient Israel (from kings to prophets to commoners) featured an abbreviated form of the tetragrammaton. One well-known example will suffice: The Hebrew name of the prophet Elijah means “YHWH is (my) God” (^ʔēlî-yāhû).

Additionally, ancient Greek transcriptions of some Hebrew words, including the tetragrammaton, have been known to scholars for some time. For example, the early church father Clement of Alexandria, in his work Stromata, briefly mentions the tetragrammaton in the context of a discussion of the ancient Israelite high priest on whose turban was inscribed the divine name. Clement transliterated this name in Greek letters as IAOUE and explained that it meant “He who is and who is to come.”⁸ The letters OU in this context likely represent the sound /w/, which means that the more recently popularized rendering “Yahweh” is a plausible reconstruction for YHWH.⁹ We must remember, however, that this form still remains something of a scholarly reconstruction.¹⁰

A Theologically Rich Etymology

The meaning of this divine name is most directly hinted at in Moses’s famous encounter with the God of Israel in Exodus 3. One of the most basic challenges facing this reluctant servant of the Lord (who had grown up in the court of Pharaoh) was his ignorance of the name of the God of his fathers. Amazingly, when Moses speaks to him, God not only gives a name for himself but also provides a strong indication about the actual meaning of the tetragrammaton:

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I Am Who I Am [^ʔehyeh ^ʔăšer ^ʔehyeh].” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I Am [^ʔehyeh] has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘LORD [YHWH], the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” (Exodus 3:13–15)

There are numerous things to consider from this brief passage. Notice that in his first response, God appears not to directly answer Moses’s question (at least not in the way that we might expect). The phrase “I Am Who I Am” is not an ordinary name, to say the least. Yet notice the small capitals in the ESV translation. This is a claim from the translators that this very phrase is intimately linked with the tetragrammaton YHWH (which is also rendered in small capitals).

Notice further that in his second response, God uses an abbreviated form of the phrase (“I Am [^ʔehyeh] has sent me to you”) as though it were the subject of its clause (and thus, an ordinary noun or proper name). In this class of Hebrew verbs, grammatical person (whether first, second, or third) is indicated by a set of prefixes. Contrast the first-person form ^ʔe-hyeh, “I am” (verse 14), with the third-person form yi-hyeh, “he is.” The latter is very similar in sound to the tetragrammaton (with only one spelling difference: YHYH vs. YHWH). Though a full account of all the sound changes involved cannot be given here, it is likely that the name “Yahweh” means something like “He is.”¹¹ This meaning makes it a powerful piece of scriptural evidence for the classical Christian doctrine of divine aseity. The God of the Bible simply is eternally self-existent, and all other things are contingent on him for their being.

This foundational passage of Scripture and its powerful theological message echoes throughout other parts of God’s word. One particularly striking example has been noted in Hosea by Gary Schnittjer. Recall that the prophet was instructed by God to marry Gomer, an unfaithful woman, in order to illustrate the persistent unfaithfulness of God’s covenant people, Israel. The third child that Gomer gave birth to was named “Not My People” because, as God explained, “Call his name Not My People [lō^{ʔ ʕ}ammî], for you are not my people [lō^{ʔ ʕ}ammî], and I am [^ʔehyeh] not your God” (Hosea 1:9). Recall the language of Exodus 3:14: “I Am [^ʔehyeh] has sent me to you.” The repetition of the same verbal form in Hosea 1:9 appears to be an allusion to the former. Essentially, God is telling Hosea’s people: “I am not your I Am.”¹²

Another example comes from the New Testament. In Revelation 1:4, John uses somewhat awkward Greek to signal to his readers that grace and peace come to them from the eternal God himself: “Grace to you and peace from Him Who Is And Who Was And Who Is To Come.” The ESV text has been modified here with these capitals to give the reader a sense of the original and also to suggest a subtle allusion to Exodus 3:14. The eternal, self-sufficient God who appeared to Moses at Sinai is the same God whom the apostle John simultaneously references and describes to the seven churches.

Connecting the Old and New Testaments

The strong tradition of avoiding the pronunciation of the divine name likely emerged during the intertestamental period, for reasons that remain somewhat mysterious. The Jewish Talmud recounts a tradition dating back centuries relating to a certain Simeon the Righteous, a high priest in the early Hellenistic period. Numerous miracles were said to have occurred among the people because of him. Yet upon his death, the tradition states, his fellow priests were no longer willing to bless the people by uttering the sacred name of God. This coincided with the disappearance of miraculous signs, which may be interpreted as an understanding that divine revelation had ceased among the Jewish people.¹³ The Jewish Mishnah (third century AD) illustrates the culmination of this long trend: “These . . . have no share in the world to come . . . the one who pronounces the Name with its letters” (Sanh. 10.1).

Most significantly, this avoidance had a far-reaching impact on the earliest and most significant ancient translations of the Old Testament — the Greek Bible popularly called the “Septuagint.” The standard practice in the Greek Bible was to render the tetragrammaton with the Greek word kýrios, “Lord.”¹⁴ Recall that the pre-Masoretic Jewish reading tradition required the substitution of the word ^ʔădōnāy, “(my) Lord,” wherever the tetragrammaton was found. It is therefore almost certain that both traditions have the same source, which originated early in the Second Temple period.

When the New Testament Scriptures were written, a majority of citations from the Old Testament made use of some form of existing Greek versions that had been circulating in Jewish communities, sometimes for centuries.¹⁵ The convention for rendering the tetragrammaton as kýrios thus made its way into the New Testament. This phenomenon also extended to other parts of the New Testament that were not citations from the Old Testament. For example, the first occurrence of kýrios in the New Testament is at Matthew 1:20, which imitates the Old Testament (Greek) idiom with the phrase ángelos kýriou, “angel of the Lord.”

Yet without a doubt the most fascinating feature of kýrios in the New Testament is the fact that the majority of its 719 occurrences have Jesus as their referent. This amazing linguistic feature is built into the very fabric of the New Testament and can be encountered on virtually every page. Multiple New Testament authors exploit this usage of kýrios in various ways to give readers a sustained and powerful argument: Not only is Jesus Christ “Lord”; he is in fact YHWH. Often both truths about Christ intersect in a single passage. For example, in his famous Carmen Christi (“hymn of Christ”), Paul speaks in captivating language about the lordship of Jesus Christ:

God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord [kýrios], to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9–11)

The identity of Jesus Christ becomes all the more astonishing when one realizes that Paul is citing directly from Isaiah, who describes the God of Israel with similar language:

Declare and present your case; let them take counsel together! Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old? Was it not I, the LORD [YHWH]? And there is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none besides me. “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. By myself I have sworn; from my mouth has gone out in righteousness a word that shall not return: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall [confess to God].’” (Isaiah 45:21–23)¹⁶

Paul is powerfully affirming all that Isaiah had affirmed. YHWH is the one true God and the only Savior of mankind. He alone is worthy, and all who are on earth will one day bend their knee and confess him as Lord. The man Jesus Christ, then, is not an upstart god or a rival savior. He is the God of Israel and her only Savior.¹⁷

The Name of God in the Church of God

How should Christians regard the tetragrammaton? This question has become particularly relevant in recent years, with some advocating for a more widespread usage of the reconstruction “Yahweh,” especially in Bible translation.¹⁸

First, believers should not suppose that uttering the name “Yahweh” is sinful or even inadvisable. Such attitudes partly originate from unhelpful misunderstandings about the commandment against taking God’s name in vain (Exodus 20:7). In fact, this commandment has little to do with merely pronouncing God’s name. Rather, it is concerned with the way that a believer’s actions and behavior can either glorify or bring dishonor to the name of God. In short, although the word “Yahweh” remains a scholarly reconstruction, there is nothing theologically wrong about attempting to speak this word as the name of God.

The deeper issue relates to the legacy of the ancient Jewish practice of substituting “Lord” for the tetragrammaton. Some regard this as an unhelpful superstition and therefore one that should be fully abandoned in the church today. This consideration is especially relevant in the case of Bible translation, since the tetragrammaton occurs thousands of times in the Old Testament. One encounters various strategies when examining translation practices in various world languages. Some translations employ a type of transliteration (for example, approximating the historic form “Jehovah,” or perhaps “Yahweh” in more modern translations). Other translations, such as most English versions, adopt the historic Jewish tradition inherited in the New Testament and substitute the title “LORD.” Yet other versions merely default to a translation of “God” or perhaps use a modifier (such as French l’Éternel, “the Eternal One”). It must be noted that not all translations are consistent in their practices, and some in fact combine multiple options.

The practice of translation, especially that of Bible translation, is a highly complex activity that requires translators to factor in multiple considerations, including, but not limited to, (1) fidelity to the source text; (2) readability in the target language; (3) sensitivity to a host of contextual, pragmatic, and historical factors; (4) an awareness of the target readership, including their prior history with previous translations as well as their intended use of the current work. Given the precedent established by the New Testament, however, it does not seem that the substitution of YHWH with “LORD” should be regarded as straightforwardly impermissible.

Ultimately, any translation strategy will be unsatisfactory to some degree. For example, the consonantal sequence ^ʔDNY adds significant difficulty in consistently rendering the tetragrammaton. Minor adjustment of the vocalism yields three main options: (1) ^ʔădōnîy, “my lord” (a singular, human lord; cf. Genesis 23:6); (2) ^ʔădōnay, “my lords” (plural, human lords; cf. Genesis 19:2); (3) ^ʔădōnāy, “(my) Lord” (used exclusively in reference to Israel’s God). The latter (^ʔădōnāy) occurs hundreds of times in the Old Testament, yet is not easily identifiable in translation, since it does not feature the consonants of the tetragrammaton (YHWH).

Yet in some cases, this distinction can be exegetically significant. For example, consider the famous Psalm 110. The psalm begins with two distinct “lords” being identified: “A Psalm of David. The LORD [YHWH] says to my Lord [^ʔădōnîy = human lord]: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’” (Psalm 110:1). Since we know from the superscription that David is speaking, we infer that YHWH is conversing with David’s superior (given that David calls him “my Lord”). This human Lord is described in lofty language for the next few verses, and YHWH himself promises great things for him.

“YHWH is the one true God and the only Savior of mankind.”

Once we reach verse 5, however, we read the following: “The Lord [^ʔădōnāy] is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.” The unique vocalization in the Hebrew of this “Lord” can mean only one thing: YHWH and David’s Lord have switched places! Previously, YHWH had commanded that David’s Lord be situated at his right hand (the place of honor). Now it is apparently YHWH who is located at the right hand of David’s Lord.

This dramatic feature of the psalm can only be understood from a careful study of the Hebrew vocalization. And without a greater and more widespread knowledge of God’s word in the original languages, these truths will not impact the people of God as mightily as they otherwise could.¹⁹

At the end of the day, no single translation decision can satisfactorily accomplish all that God’s people need to know about God’s name. Instead, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers that God has given to the church throughout its history labor diligently to equip the saints (Ephesians 4:11–12). They impress upon God’s people the profound truth that their God and Savior has a name. Moreover, this name communicates something of his unequaled nature — that he is the eternal, self-sufficient, and everlasting God. And lastly, they teach the saints that the Lord Jesus Christ truly is that same God of Israel, come in the flesh to rescue his own.